Should new clashes / another civil war break out, I know I have a place from where to watch it all :
Beirut, as seen from the mountains. The workers at the construction site told me I could come and enjoy the view from there. They even promised me the comfy chair.
Photo taken in Fanar, east of Beirut, May 18th 2008.
I feel empty, like the streets of the city I live in.Betrayed, by the promise to withdraw all gunmen from my neighborhood, whereas in reality the building across the street is still the base of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the guys waving their guns at the army patrol passing by. Defeated, by the accusations of friends that I have been brainwashed because I have a different opinion than they do– friends from both sides of the political and sectarian divide. You are either with us or against us. Drained, trying not to lose faith in people; the people I know, and the people I don’t know. Empty like the streets of the city I live in.
In the media, the past few days have, yet again, been classified as ‘the worst violence since the 1975-1990 Civil War’. How many times can something be ‘the worst violence since…’ until it becomes the new civil war? How many rockets need to be shot from one apartment into another until we call it a civil war? How many masked gunmen on streetcorners, how many houses burned, how many people kidnapped or stabbed to death with knives?
On Thursday everyone said: it will be over by tomorrow night. On Friday everyone said: Saturday it will be over, at the latest. Saturday, everyone was convinced it wouldn’t last another day. It is now Sunday night. The fighting has moved from Beirut to Tripoli, to Choueifat, to Aley…
I have heard enough stories about the beginning of the war in 1975 that I don’t need to add ‘disillusioned’ to the list above, should the current situation last another year. Or fifteen.
This is where we tried to sleep tonight: between the bedroom wall and the hallway, with our heads against the toilet. There were rounds of heavy shooting in our street and the streets surrounding us, shrapnel ricocheting off fences and balconies, and big explosions that made the windows rattle. We stayed between the walls, with the windows slightly ajar and the curtains closed, as we were told to do by many civil war-veterans (our friends’ parents).
Yet Hamra is not mentioned on the news. I think no-one really expected much fighting here. ‘If anything happens, come to me!’ I would tell my friends from areas that would obviously be battlegrounds. ‘Don’t worry,’ my friends would tell me in return, ‘you live in Hamra, it’s safe.’ Well, not as safe as we thought. I knew it last night when the janitor of the building told me that the two men who came to check the roof the night before were not Lebanese Army, but from the Future Movement (pro-government Sunni). And when I saw two armed men on the abandoned building across the street.
In the middle of the night we woke up by particularly heavy rumbling. Explosions? Bombings? This sounded too heavy, too close. Then we saw lightning and rain, and we were strangely relieved. Maybe, if they get really wet, the fighters will give up for the night? ‘When I was little,’ I told my friends, ‘I used to think a storm meant that God was angry with the people. He must be really pissed off now!’ ‘Well of course he is! I mean, of course he’s very patient, – after all, it’s God – but come on, he’s dealing with the Lebanese here!’
And so it is war. I just left my 8th floor (rooftop) apartment when I saw two armed men on the abandoned building across the street, pointing their weapons to the road, and when I realised there is not one room in the house without windows. The people who were outside were running across the intersections, staying close to the walls and closed shops.
In the afternoon, I went to the supermarket and saw people with panic-stricken faces, throwing 20 packets of one-minute noodles in their shopping carts. There were no vegetables left, no bread, no eggs even. In a half-hearted attempt to follow their example I bought some cans of beans and a pack of toilet paper, which are now sitting on the table in an empty house.
After Nasrallah’s speech, in which he didn’t say he would tell his people to stop fighting, this side of Beirut went crazy: incessant gunfire, the sound of explosions so close that the windows were shaking, people screaming at each other to GET OFF THE STREETS! I am now with some friends who live on the second floor around the corner. We have closed the curtains and cracked open the windows in case the fighting gets closer and the glass breaks.
The government is meeting to decide whether they will declare a state of emergency. Meanwhile, we are doing our cardio-exercises sitting on the couch: our hearts are racing at an unimaginable speed, and we smile crazily at each other every time the explosions seem to come closer. No reason to panic, if it’s not even a state of emergency yet.
